The right to vote and to cast a free and secret ballot is supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy. Yet, upwards of 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of a past felony conviction. In fact, felons are the only group who is banned from voting by law. While Maine and Vermont allow all residents to vote, even residents serving time in jail, every other state has enacted laws that ban those serving time from voting. Two states, Virginia and Kentucky, permanently disenfranchise people convicted of felonies even after they have served their time.

The exclusion of lawbreakers from the political process dates back
hundreds of years. Colonial law incorporated provisions that restricted
or eliminated the rights of felons to vote. However, today's laws that
restrict voting rights owe their history to the post-civil war
reconstruction era. Southern states in particular worried about the
potential effects of the15th amendment, which gave African Americans
the right to vote. These states enacted a series of "Jim Crow" laws,
such as poll taxes and literacy requirements, as a means to
disenfranchise voters. Banning people with felony convictions from
voting significantly limits the number of African-Americans who can
vote. According to the Sentencing Project, "1.4 million African American men, or 13% of black men, is disenfranchised, a rate seven-times the national average."

Over the last few years, advocates of felon voting rights have helped to successfully dismantle some laws, but the fight continues and millions of citizens every election are unable to vote because they have a felony conviction on their record.

Nearly six months after Gov. Charlie Crist and the Cabinet made it easier for some felons to regain their civil rights, the system is choked by a backlog of more than one hundred thousand cases awaiting review.